Commons

What is valuable in society and how shall we protect it? This report, written by David Bollier, draws upon three days of discussion by twenty thinkers and activists convened by the Commons Strategies Group.

Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Niaros of the P2P Foundation explore how new value regimes - such as for example open and contributory value accounting practices - can represent a shift towards post-capitalist practices. What if the commons represent a new economy that is being born within the old? We invite you to learn more about this powerful societal shift documented in this report.

This is the report of a Berlin workshop that was designed to serve as a space for experts with backgrounds in international trade, law, the environment and public health to review the draft of a WTO Agreement for the Supply of Global Public Goods as proposed by KEI and provide technical and strategic advice on how to move forward.

The report summarizes the outcome of a workshop of the Commons Strategies Group in cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Foundation with a diverse group of twenty commons-oriented activists, academics, policy experts and project leaders for three days in Lehnin, Germany, outside of Berlin, from February 28 to March 1, 2016.

Up to 4.000 potato varieties are growing in Peru in a high-altitude Sacred Valley of the Incas. Six Quechua communities have been able to maintain the integrity of their biocultural traditions and fragile ecosystem.

The book Patterns of Commoning is a special series of essays which explores the inner dynamics of commoning - its ethics, social practices and worldview. In our dossier you can find a selection of nine texts to stimulate your appetite for more.

What if a poorer community created its own currency to foster social exchange? We interviewed Ruddick, the founder of the Bangla-Pesa to learn more about his remarkable experiment in community-based money.

In 2011, a community of farmers, designers, developers, engineers, architects, roboticists and open source thinkers came together in Boston, Massachusetts, to explore a simple yet radical idea – that great improvements in agriculture could be achieved by reducing barriers to knowledge exchange.

Cecosesola is a network of about sixty cooperatives and grassroots organizations in Venezuela, with about 20,000 members. The cooperatives sell at weekly markets and provide community-backed loans, among many other services.

Making commons come alive again in everyday life seems like a revolution that can be interpreted through two lenses. Is it a rediscovery of precapitalist and prestate organizational principles or is it a break with the current political order?